and isalsopredicted to double in the next 50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply forthis booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come.

Scientists find that

GM foods promise to meet this need

and it

has been more andmore popular not only for the producers but also for the consumers

because of itsnumerous

advantages such aspest resistance, lower price, more nutrition and so on.

Although it is undeniable that GM food still has some challenges to overcomeincluding environmental hazards, human health risks, influence on food chain ofecosystem and so on, the trend for thedevelopment

of GM food will not be stoppedsince these difficultiesare quite

negligible.

Inorder to have a deep and comprehensive understanding of GM food, let’sfirstly focus on what the GM food is.From the definition,the term GM food

orGMOs (genetically-modified organisms) is most commonly used to refer to cropplants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biologytechniques. These plants have been modified in the laboratory to enhance desiredtraits suchas increased resistance to herbicides or improved nutritional content. Theenhancement of desired traits has traditionally been undertaken through breeding.Geneticengineering, on the other hand, can create plants with the exact desired traitvery rapidly and with great accuracy. For example, plant geneticists can isolate agene

responsible for drought tolerance and insert that gene into a different plant. The newgenetically-modified plant will gain drought tolerance as well. Not only can genes betransferred from one plant to another, but genes from non-plant organisms also can beused. The best known example of this is the use of B.t. genes in corn and other crops.

B.t. crystal protein genes have been transferred into corn, enabling the corn to produceits own pesticides against insects such as the European corn borer.

(Deborah B.Whitman, 2000)From what has been demonstrated above, we could conclude thatGM food could have desired traits throughgenetically

modified process.

Initially, let’s concentrate on the reasons why GM food is so attractive to peopleand how does these virtues maintain pestresistance, lower price and increasenutrition.

It is certainly obvious that crop losses from insect pests can be staggering,resulting in devastating financial loss for farmers and starvation in developingcountries. Farmers typically use many tons ofchemical pesticides annually.

On

theother hand,

Consumers do not wish to eat food that has been treated with pesticidesbecause of potential health hazards, and run-off of agricultural wastes from excessiveuse of pesticides and fertilizers can poison the

water supply andlead

harm to theenvironment.However,Growing GM foods such as B.t. corn can help eliminate theapplication of chemical pesticides and reduce the cost ofgrowing crops.For example,as we put the anti-insects gene into plants, these particular plants would automaticallygain the pest resistance and prevent themselves from infected by harmful insects.Inthis case, GM technology would not only save much money which was spent onpesticide

but also reduce the risks of absorbing

harmful chemical substances for theproducers.

Furthermore, GM technology would also increase the production of crops bybeing incorporatedsome

powerful multiplying genes into their original genesequences.(Knut J. Heller, 2004)

As a result, with the supply of crops increasing a lot,the price of these things would absolutely decrease according to the economic theory.Therefore, more and more people would afford these cheap foods so that GM foodactually makes a large contributionto overcoming the global hunger for developingcountries.In this way,disseminating

the GM food is an essentialandnecessary

trendfor

developing countries.

Finally, the best advantage for our health is that GM food could have morenutrition than general

food. It is well known that malnutrition is common in thirdworld countries where impoverished peoples

just

rely on a single crop such as ricefor the main staple of their diet. However, rice does not contain adequate amounts ofall necessary nutrients to

prevent malnutrition. If rice could be geneticallyengineered to contain additional vitamins and minerals, nutrient deficiencies couldbe alleviated. For example,

researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of TechnologyInstitute for Plant Sciences have created a strain of "golden" rice containing anunusually high content of

Although GM food holds so many advantages which are illustrated above, somepeople still argue that GM food would aroseenvironmental hazards, human health

risks, influence on food chain of ecosystem and so on.Thus,government

shouldlimit the study and supply of GM food no matter in the lab or in markets.

Firstly,

let’s focus on the most commondisadvantage

about the environmentalhazards.

Biologically,crop plants engineered for herbicide tolerance and weeds willcross-breed, resulting in the transfer of the herbicide resistance genes

from the cropsinto the weeds.

These "superweeds" would then be herbicide tolerant as well. Otherintroduced genes may cross over into non-modified crops planted next to GMcrops.(Farid E. Ahmed, 2004) Besides,Just as some populations of mosquitoesdeveloped resistance to the now-banned pesticide DDT, many people are concernedthat insects will become resistant to B.t. orother crops that have beengenetically-modified to produce their own pesticides.(Sibel Roller, 1998)As a result,these disadvantages would directly or indirectly destroy the species equilibrium ofenvironment so most of the opponents suggest to stop using

GM technologyfor thesake of protecting the ecosystem equilibrium.

Then, there are also some concerns that indicate the human health risks for theGM food mainly on the allergenicity and some unknown effects on human body.According to a research, thereis a possibility that introducing a gene into a plantmay create a newallergen

or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals.For instance, a

proposal to

incorporate a gene from Brazil nuts into soybeans wasabandoned because of the fear of causing unexpected allergicreactions. (Farid E.Ahmed, 2004)On the

other hand, there is a growing concern that introducing foreigngenes into food plants may have anunexpected and negative impact on humanhealth.

An

article published in Lancet examined the effects of GM potatoes on thedigestive tract inrates and it

claimed that there were appreciable differences in theintestines of rats fed GM potatoes and rats fed unmodified potatoes.(Deborah B.Whitman, 2000)

Finally, there are also somearguments

which report that GM food mayinfluence the food chain of ecosystem.In biology, as a new species get involved intoa group, the gene pool of that group will modify from onegeneration

to another,which may result in a large geneticvariety

in this group.As aresult,the unexpectedgenetic variety may bring in a huge-scale death for thisspecies

group.It isundoubted that this huge-scale death of plants would kill many predators feed on thisplant, which would ultimately damage the entire food chain of ecosystem.

In sum, genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world'shunger and malnutrition problems, and to help protect and preserve the environmentby increasing yield and reducing reliance upon chemical pesticides andherbicides.Many people feel that genetic engineering is the inevitable wave of the future and thatwe cannot afford to ignore a technology that has such enormous potential benefits.However, we must proceed with caution to avoid causing unintended harm to

humanhealth and the environment as a result of our enthusiasm for this powerful technology.